


Flint and Steel

by Yeomanrand



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Comment Fic, Fights, Friendship, Gen, Male-Female Friendship, POV Male Character, POV Third Person, Partnership, Present Tense, SHIELD, Short, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-31
Updated: 2012-05-31
Packaged: 2017-11-06 11:22:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/418329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yeomanrand/pseuds/Yeomanrand
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Their every fight is intimate.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flint and Steel

**Author's Note:**

  * For [igrockspock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/igrockspock/gifts).



Their every fight is intimate.

⇢

The first time, they are enemies. And not in the sense of shirts-versus-skins in a pickup game on a makeshift court behind the Big Top, but real, blood-deep, one-of-us-dies-here one-of-us-gets-the-prize enemies.

Or so they think; Clint knows it's not just in his head because he knows that flint-hard glint in her eyes as well as he knows the bow in his hands. No match needed to strike spark to flame, just a solid enough blow. She looks up at him and he acknowledges he's been seen in the same moment he shifts his aim and releases the nock.

He misses.

That makes it personal.

⇢⇢

The next time they meet, she's neutral and he's the villain; bulked up on adrenaline and so furious he'd give up his bow and a lifetime of training to strangle someone with his bare hands. She's in his way, and he grabs her hip, fending off a kick to his groin with his knee and thigh and tripping her up but she's quicker than he thinks, even on her back in the post-Show sawdust rank with horse piss and elephant shit; she knocks him down with a well-timed shot to the ankle. She straddles his waist, settling atop him in a mockery of intimacy, firm calves and thighs tightening until he would have struggled to breathe even if she wasn't pressing the shaft of one of his arrows across his throat, fletching and tip to either side in his greying peripheral vision.

She's gone when he comes to, coughing and confused.

He never remembers what he was so angry about, though he remembers who he wanted to kill; she has left quiver and unstrung bow leaning carefully against the center ring.

⇢⇢⇢

The next time almost ends both of them. He has his orders, and he remembers her for the threat she is. What was personal feels sad and empty; as she is a proper target he reads her dossier multiple times, until each word is etched into his memory.

He learns the woman he is meant to kill: a stolen child, changeling, _el'fami_ , broken and remade into the perfect assassin.

The shift and twist of their bodies, the elemental power they transmit to each other and the bruises they'll both bear; the unchoreographed dance is as violent as sex. He gets his bow across her throat and she turns her head ever so slightly and he sees the flint he remembers, fire in the Big Top, only from here he can see hard stone fractured nearly to shattering. 

He is across the world, in New Zealand, when she awakens in the tender care of S.H.I.E.L.D. He tries not to think what that might mean for her, who is taking that first newborn's breath in a grown woman's body.

⇢⇢⇢⇢

Coulson insists they spar with each other. Clint doesn't argue. Natasha (Tasha) tells him she won't go easy on him.

Seven weeks of sessions, two sets of two cracked ribs each, sixteen stitches to Clint's forearm and one arrow-graze to the neck later, Natasha is cleared for duty; he waits until they're elbow deep in trouble in Budapest to tell her he never expects (never wants) her to.

⇢⇢⇢⇢⇢

A blue wash over everything: his knife, her hand bruising on his wrist; forcing her head forward with his fingers hard in her hair. She fights like she always has, personally impersonal, her body her weapon: her teeth sinking into his forearm until his grip gives way to her determination.

The familiar impact of her shin to his face and unforgiving darkness. 

A medbed, a room smaller than a closet and Tasha there, talking to him, clearing his head in the way only she can. The way only she knows him well enough.

_Cognitive recalibration_ , she says, back to him so he can't see her face at first and if the situation she goes on to describe didn't involve gods and wormholes and a thousand things he struggles to get his brain around he might laugh. As is, he's afraid if he starts he might not stop.

There's a storm coming. He sees mended flint in her eyes, knows she sees tempered steel in his.

This, he thinks, _this_ is who they were always meant to be.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much to noirrosaleen for the prompt and igrockspock for the comment fest. Polished up a bit since I comment-boxed it.
> 
> Ever so much love to shinychimera for the beta. It's always a better story for your input, m'dear.
> 
> Concrit always welcome.


End file.
